Whoo-Hoo! New Fossil Fuel!!! A New Turn Lane, and a Cancelled Crosswalk

Front Page last week

You probably saw the piece last week about the new gas station near Madrona and Commercial. Part of the traffic impact mitigation is a new northbound turn lane from the east, westbound side of Madrona onto Commercial.

New sidewalk and turn lane in progress, mid-September

That's in progress, and supposed to be done soon. But it's interesting to see that the new turn lane (between old curb and new sidewalk) may not be wide enough for later striping of a bike lane. A disconnected fragment of bike lane wouldn't make much sense here, but there are other places where we do stripe fragments, waiting to be assembled into a longer route.

The gas station did cancel a crosswalk.

At the bus stop for Fred's there's a need

Crosswalk at #4 deleted from Commercial-Vista Corridor Plan

Early concepts for the Commercial-Vista Corridor Plan included an enhanced crosswalk here, but the turning and weaving movements by people driving cars were given priority, and the crosswalk deleted.

So it's just interesting to see that we will carve out room for a new turn lane, but not for a new crosswalk. This is our autoism: Routinely we tolerate inconvenience and hazard for people on foot, and more rarely slow or inconvenience those in cars.

The proposal for a new Costco and its gas station may create similar conflicts between the interests of people on foot and people in cars.

And also, the gas stations represent 20th century fossil fuel delivery systems, are  inconsistent with our greenhouse gas policies and needs, and we should ask ourselves why we are building new ones rather than phasing them out.

Previously on the gas station:

• In 2015 here and here on early stages of planning.
• In 2016 here with some notes on the Commercial-Vista Corridor Study and interference with an enhanced crosswalk that was ultimately removed from the study plan.